The Nightman Cometh

As I sit here writing this, my eyes are heavy. VERY heavy. I just got off a 6 day stint of night shifts and I am going through all the feelings and thoughts that I think most people who work odd hours can relate to. Yes, this is you shift workers at Wegmans, industry workers, nightlife people, and everyone else who has the pleasure/burden of being employed during the darkness. We all know there are some things that the 9-5er’s may never understand. The nighttime workers are a special breed. We’re hidden from the world, and oftentimes our labor goes unnoticed. It’s easy to forget there is another world, and a sect of people who live in it while the daytimers are sleeping. It’s this fringe life that we love and hate.

There really is no sense of time when you work nights. It’s really hard to grasp how disoriented you are until you forget to take the trash out to the curb three weeks in a row because you have no clue what day it is. It also doesn’t help that when you leave work in the morning, its a different day then when you went in for the beginning of your shift. Then you go home and sleep for a few hours, it feels like 10 am when you wake up, but really it’s 4 pm, so you missed the mail to send off your rent check, and the bank is already closed. Not only that but, getting off from work in the morning means you have to come back TONIGHT, not tomorrow.

I find it really annoying when people of the day complain that I sleep too much. If I could muster anger, I probably would, but the exhaustion is too great to become mad. A person who works overnight is VERY lucky to get at most, 5 hours of interrupted sleep when they get home in the morning. This is often not the case though. It doesn’t matter how well you prepare to go to bed, there almost always happens to be something that will wake you up. That little bit of sunlight peeking through your shades? The sudden urge to pee, or a ferocious growl in your stomach? A stray phone call? These will all bring you lucidly awake, and sometimes you can go back to sleep, but usually it will leave you in just that state:half up and half down. Unable to sleep, but also unable to leave your bed. Yes daytime people, I was in my room until5 pm, but I can assure you, I probably was not sleeping that whole time.

FOMO: Fear of missing out. This is a plague I think most of us night people experience.We want to sleep the day away for our own sanity and health, but we also don’t want to miss out on the family barbecue, or that class at the gym. We don’t want to sleep through our doctors appointments, or miss out on normal business hours when we need the oil changed in the car. Maybe it’s a side effect of being awake from 7pm-7am, but even still, it can be hard to reconcile what is worth losing sleep over, and what is not. None of us want to miss out. I REALLY don’t like missing out on things. But I also don’t like feeling more tired that I already am.

This might seem most obvious, but I must say the most debilitating part of working nights is indefinitely the fatigue. People who work overnight are exhausted. All the time. It doesn’t matter how much catching up you play, the fatigue is always there. Sometimes it soaks you like a sponge leaving you no choice but to sleep, and other times it’s like a haze that hangs over your head. You become sensitive. Sensitive to sound. Sensitive to bright lights. There’s always that one dayshifter who eagerly comes in and turns all the lights on in the joint. Thats the worst. Bring me my garlic, and let me sink back into my coffin please. You also become sensitive to what you eat. Anything past 4 am and my stomach turns.The only exception is breakfast. With mimosas. Or Bloody Marys, of course.

While on this opposite schedule, it does allow for some perks. I already mentioned one of them (brunch), but another happens to be grocery shopping. Post night shift is the best time to go grocery shopping. I love it. Its so quiet and peaceful. You just just drag yourself along with the shopping cart beside all the octogenarians who are the only other patrons at the store in the early morning. There is also no worry about rush hour traffic. I get so mad when its 5 pm and I accidentally get stuck in everyone else’s dash to get home on my day off. How do people deal with it on a daily basis?? Instead, I get to enjoy the sunrise when coming to the end of a night shift in solitude. The sunrise, to me, has been noticeably more colorful and breathtaking than any sunset that follows the daytimers home.

Photo by Amy Furnare

Everyone has different reasons for working at night, however, most of us don’t have a choice. There does seem to be some bond between those who work nights. Like I said before, it takes a special breed, and it’s certainly nice to know that we are not alone in our struggles. We participate in society in the unconventional way, and thats probably because we’re unconventional people. Thank goodness there is a place for us.

#Sleep #Work #Night #Nightshift #FOMO #Tired